


I said, (you remember what I said)

by sludgement



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Best Friends, Friendship, Gen, Platonic Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-08
Updated: 2016-11-08
Packaged: 2018-08-29 22:53:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8508691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sludgement/pseuds/sludgement
Summary: At Byrgenwerth, Rom is changing into something else. Others avoid her, the way she used to have to try to avoid them. Her memory fails. Her mind rustles. Her dearest friend doesn't seem to understand why she isn't as happy about it as he is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Assumes Micolash and Rom were students together at Byrgenwerth (Rom is a few years older in this fic) and that prior to Rom's ascension, she and others were aware of the process, and not aware of exactly what would happen to her. Otherwise deliberately vague in terms of timeline, to better fit within others' preferred interpretations. 
> 
> A fic about friendship and misunderstanding.

Rom likes the way Byrgenwerth’s interior feels simultaneously underground and airy. The candlelight on the cool stone and wood reminds her of early morning gray, or early evening blue, no matter what time it is. Every set of doors seems like it could open onto somewhere else, at another hour of the day. Rom spends more time trying to picture the world outside than looking at it, sometimes. 

The bookshelves and thick walls swallow up sounds, too. Bells are muffled, voices sound farther off, it is easy to pretend to be alone. When noise, voices and faces recede, it is easier to think. 

She has needed to pretend at loneliness less lately. People have left her alone in a different way. 

Rom draws her legs up to her chest on the couch, slumping. The cool leather warming slowly under her skin, the heavy smell of dust, the ache in her back and hips all feel precious, somehow, like fleeting sensory impressions impossible to commit fully to a memory that’s always been shaky to begin with. 

She doesn’t look up when the doors open. It’s either someone who will try to talk to her, or not. They pause, then cross the room toward her quickly, in a rustle of familiar footsteps. 

“Rom,” Micolash says, leaning over the couch behind her, a hand on either side of her shoulders. “Good morning, Rom.” 

She isn’t surprised at being found. They’ve studied together here before. It’s one of Rom’s preferred places to hide from being bothered, and a long time since they’ve established permission to bother one another. 

It’s a little surprising he hasn’t tried to find her sooner. “Hello, Micolash. Is it morning?” 

“A few minutes past midnight.” He leans sideways, climbs over the back of the couch, sitting clumsily beside her. 

“I see. I would have guessed afternoon.” 

Micolash laughs, sounding a little nervous. Rom lets her eyes close. She has been wanting to talk to him, if the opportunity presented itself— which it hasn’t, in the past two and a half weeks. Not quite long enough to forget how to talk, but long enough that Rom isn’t sure where to start. 

“I brought the book with the problems we’re meant to be studying, but I don’t think anyone expects me to finish them,” she says. 

“Oh. You do have a lot else on your mind, don’t you.” Micolash keeps moving about, next to her. Rom doesn’t have to look to know that her friend is sitting uneasily, hands moving endlessly over each other, fingertips to his mouth. 

“I suppose. I’ve also never been good with mathematics of that nature, and everyone knows that.” She says it more harshly than she means to. Of course he didn’t forget, isn’t trying to treat her differently, wouldn’t be cruel to her. 

“Sorry,” Micolash says, as if he did say something cruel and expects to be punished for it. “It’d be better not to trouble you, wouldn’t—” 

“It would be better to listen to me, unless you had some other reason for coming here.” Not for the first time, Rom wishes things didn’t come out so bluntly, with her face, in her voice. Not for the first time, Rom is jealous of Micolash’s expressiveness, the way his voice rises and falls, the way it’s easy (for her, at least) to tell how he’s feeling. 

Micolash inhales, holds his breath a moment, exhales. “All right. You’re right. Completely right.” He allows her a long enough silence to gather almost half a thought before speaking again. “Listen about what?” 

Rom frowns, unsure where to start putting anything into words. 

“No one really looks at me,” Rom says, “or if they do, it’s like I’m going to die, soon. As if I don’t… have much longer here.” 

“Well.” Micolash holds the _e,_ letting it turn into a low, thoughtful _we-e-e-ell,_ almost a hum. “They’re not entirely wrong, are they?” 

Rom breathes in sharply. His tone is genuinely warm, like they’re talking about favorite authors or theories or memories. She wonders if she spoke wrongly, somehow. If she hadn’t said _die_ with enough emphasis. 

“Either that, or like I’m being expelled. Transferring, maybe. They don’t expect me to finish anything, and not because I’m not good at it, but because it doesn’t matter if I… am good enough at anything here, anymore.” Rom makes herself continue. “I can’t tell if they’re— jealous, or— sorry for me. No one tells me how they feel.” 

“Of course they’re jealous,” Micolash says. His elbow is making a dent in the leather near her upper arm. 

“No one asks me how I feel.” 

He hesitates. Rom can tell he heard the expectation in her words, as much as she tried to phrase it like she wasn’t asking for anything. Micolash isn’t a person who enjoys doing things others expect of him. “How do you feel,” he asks, bluntly, nonetheless. 

She doesn’t know how she feels, doesn’t think she would know how to explain it if she did. “What about you? Are you jealous of me?” 

Quiet. The silence lasts long enough that Rom begins to take it as unspoken agreement, as an admission to jealousy and also to a reason she hadn’t considered for their lack of communication. Cold, simple resentment. 

“Yes,” Micolash says, “and no. It isn’t anything as clear as that. As petty, or base, or ugly, as that.” He laughs, without humor. “No, Rom. It is petty. But it isn’t common jealousy.” 

“Uncommon jealousy, then?” She can’t imagine what that means. You are either jealous for someone, or happy for them, aren’t you? Or sympathetic, maybe, though that seems too much to hope for. Pitying, more realistically. 

“You could say so, if you wanted.” 

“Who knows what I’d like,” Rom says. “Besides, I’m not sure what you mean. I don’t want to misinterpret you.” 

“It’s impossible to be truly jealous of something that is meant to happen. It’s impossible to hold onto jealousy for what someone else deserves. Jealousy is wanting what— well, what someone else isn’t fairly supposed to have, isn’t it?” 

“I think it’s just wanting what someone else has.” 

“No, it’s about fairness.” He says this like he has never been able to imagine anything else, imaginative as he is. “And you’re only the first to ascend, aren’t you, Rom.” 

“Maybe.” 

“Certainly. You’re— you’re wonderful, Rom, you’re proof, you’re refutation, you’re shining, undeniable data. You’ll change everything, by being changed. Reformation, through transformation.” His voice is trembling. 

Rom sticks her tongue out. “Someone else will have to write it all down for me, and read the book aloud.” 

“You won’t need it read to you! You’ll know. You’ll be.” He does sound jealous, now, whatever he might have said about it not being like that. He’s breathing shallowly through his teeth. “You’ll learn so much. We’ll have so much to talk about.” 

“Don’t we already have a lot to talk about?” She presses her arm against his arm, hoping it comes across as a caring gesture and not an irritated one. 

Micolash doesn’t usually like to be touched and has told Rom to touch him only sparingly, carefully, as trusted a friend as she is. He presses his own arm back into the pressure of hers for a moment. It's a serious gesture of fondness, from him. “We’ll have even more to talk about!” 

Rom can’t think how to explain (can barely think at all, lately) the stillness, the emptiness she can sometimes feel ahead of her, that she can sometimes feel inside of her when she’s waking up or falling to sleep, the quiet rustling inside her skull, the way it feels like something is opening up here and there in the folds of her mind, pushing her thoughts further apart than they’ve ever been. Rom doesn’t know a word for knowing something should hurt when it does not. She doesn’t know how to put her reverence at the process and her dismay at not choosing it herself into the same strange, lonely sentence fragment. 

So she leans over without saying any of that, tentatively resting her head on her friend’s shoulder. Micolash allows it, even dipping his shoulder lower for her comfort. She stares ahead at Micolash’s knee, at the floor before them. His shoelaces are untied, as ever. He won’t— can’t fix them, even if she points it out. 

“I wish it was happening to you,” she says, which isn’t quite dishonest.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
